The Chronicle of a Reformed Feminist Killjoy

“Is trendy good?” sounds like a title from Sex and The City

Feminism is chic. Whether or not you want to admit it, as a feminist you are partaking in one of today’s hottest trends and I can’t figure out if that’s a good thing.

In my opinion, with all things that go mainstream there is an equal amount of good and bad that comes with the exposure. The good being a lot of people become aware of whatever fad has achieved limelight status (music, social issue, celebrity. . .), the bad being a massive amount of mis-education.

I guess the real question is does the good outweigh the bad?

The good things about the popularity of feminism are numerous. For a start, people who have general idea can start conversations that open up the doors for learning more about the cause. Also, as women start to demand certain levels of respect, the oppression and degradation of women becomes less socially acceptable. Having a voice is powerful and popularity makes that voice louder.

On the flip side:

When something is cool it becomes socially expected that people have some knowledge on the topic, so they skim and get the “gist” of an idea to be somewhat conversational. With people partially learning about a concept a lot of wrong information gets received and consequently put out into the world.

Yes, women’s issues are the crux of feminism, but they are not the end all be all on the subject and it certainly is not as simple as “girls rule, boys drool”. Additionally, the hypocrisy of calling out equality for women and then degrading your sisters is not a hypocrisy lost on the critics of feminism.

So does the good outweigh the bad?

I think so.

I do think that more people knowing about feminism is a good start to the conversation, but that we need to hold one another accountable for being educated and practicing what we preach.

As always I would love to hear what anyone else thinks about the trendiness of feminist. Is it good? bad? Comment or find me on all the social media sites. Literally all of them. I even have an Ello.